Chapter 9 - Closing the Ledger
By the end of the week, the legal dissolution of my marriage was finalized with unprecedented speed.
In the state of New York, proving premeditated drugging, physical assault, and unlawful imprisonment tended to streamline divorce proceedings considerably, especially when backed by federal indictments and a mountain of forensic digital evidence compiled by Yates Logistics' private intelligence units.
Brandon didn't contest a single clause of the settlement. He signed away every claim to my companies, every penny of joint assets, and every vestige of the life he had tried to steal, sealed behind the thick glass partition of the county jail visiting room.
I hadn't gone to see him. I didn't need closure. Closure was for people who still believed the story had another chapter to write.
On Sunday evening, I drove out to Dad’s modest apartment on the south side—the one-bedroom brick building with the rusted mailboxes and the gravel parking lot where he insisted on living despite owning half the commercial real estate within a twenty-mile radius.
I parked my car, grabbed my crutches, and walked up the concrete steps to the second-floor landing.
The door was unlocked, as it always was.
Dad was sitting at his small wooden kitchen table, wearing a faded gray sweatshirt, cleaning the mechanism of an old pocket watch with a pair of fine tweezers and a magnifying glass.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside, letting Cooper—who had recovered completely from his ordeal—trot ahead to lean against Dad’s knee.
Dad looked up, setting the tweezers down on the table.
"Leg still bothering you?" he asked, nodding toward my crutches.
"Only when it rains," I said, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite him. "The doctor says the bone is knitting together properly."
Dad grunted in approval, reaching over to pour a cup of black coffee from the glass percolator on the counter and sliding it across the table toward me.
"Heard Brandon’s lawyers tried to petition for bail this morning," Dad said casually.
"Judge denied it," I replied, taking a sip of the bitter, piping-hot coffee. "They found three more offshore shell accounts tied to municipal embezzlement in New Jersey. He's looking at ten to fifteen minimum."
Dad nodded slowly, picking up his pocket watch and snapping the case shut with a crisp, satisfying click.
"Good," he said simply. "A man who forgets who built the road usually spends the rest of his life walking in the dirt."
I looked around the small, modest apartment—the faded linoleum floor, the stacks of old newspapers, the calendar hanging crookedly from the wall. To anyone else, it looked like the home of an aging, ordinary retiree living on a fixed pension.
But I knew better.
I knew that behind the walls of this ordinary life lay an empire built on absolute loyalty, razor-sharp intelligence, and an unyielding refusal to ever be underestimated again.
"Thank you, Dad," I said quietly.
Dad looked up, his weathered face softening into a faint, familiar grin.
May you like
"Don't thank me, Emmy," he said, tapping the wooden table with a scarred finger. "You're a Yates. You just needed to remember how to swing the hammer."
---
